Sipped Ink vol 5 issue 7

The Goldfinch pp533-634

What a great point at which to leave off eh? It’s almost like I planned these things… though you know better than that, dear reader, and so I’m not going to pretend. Kitsey has assumed a new role in Theo’s life; Boris re-entered and then re-exited Theo’s life; and it turns out ‘The Goldfinch’ hasn’t been in Theo’s life for some time, even though he thought it had. You can understand how a young man might be confused.

I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’m willing to play one for the purposes of this newsletter. And in that guise I’m more than willing to diagnose Theo Decker with what, in the parlance of my newly-assumed profession, we might call “issues”.

We’re familiar by now with the mélange of shame and guilt and self-loathing that underpin his psyche. We find them rearing their collecting head again this week whilst Theo is attempting to kick what seems to have become a serious drug habit. Tartt’s prose here is thick and disorienting, not frantic and fragmented in the way she depicts the confusion following the Met explosion, and not quite the same as the language around Theo & Boris’s youthful alcohol-fuelled exploits. This is something more, and the depth of its hooks in Theo are not insignificant. Consider, for instance, the way in which Theo calls out specific bright details of the world as sources of pain:

Noise, lights, conversation, relentless press of bodies: with my fresh, un-blunted senses the smells were overwhelming, wine and garlic and perfume and sweat, sizzling platters of lemongrass chicken hurried out of the kitchen, and the turquoise banquettes, the bright orange dress of the girl next to me, were like industrial chemicals squirted directly into my eyes. (p. 541)

Compare this to the early section of the novel, in the New York that Theo shared with his mother, where the stripes on an umbrella or the green of a lizard seemed to be ornaments in the world, to be noticed and enjoyed. In this shift we can see just how altered Theo is from the young boy he once was. And the slide is something Theo seems almost powerless to arrest. To an ever greater extent we see him becoming more his father and less his mother. Theo explicitly tries to call upon how his father would have handled a situation like the one he is in with Lucius Reeve, and later, when it is all too much:

for the first time I understood the impulse that had driven my dad to cash out his bank account, pick up his shirts from the cleaners, gas up the car, and leave town without a word. (p. 549)

Bit by bit this week we’ve seen the web of Theo’s deceits spin out to entrap more of those whom he cares about: first Hobie (who, Theo realises too late, could be ruined by Theo’s shady dealings), and then the Barbours (who, through Platt, he seeks to draw into the whole mess via forged documents as a means of helping himself). The unthinking creation of a problem, the deepening of the mire, the selfish inveigling of others to save one’s own skin. This is the modus operandi of Larry Decker, mirrored in the son who came to hate him, and now hates himself partially because he too sees the resemblance.

And what hope for Theo? He is newly engaged at least, and takes some genuine joy in the pleasure that this brings to Mrs Barbour:

[T]he memory of Mrs. Barbour’s joy at the news (you tell her, Kitsey had said, she’ll be extra happy if she hears it from you) was a moment I played and replayed and never tired of: her startled eyes, then delight blooming unguarded on her cool, tired face. One hand held to me and the other to Kitsey, but that beautiful smile — I would never forget it — had been all for me.

Who knew it was in my power to make anyone so happy? Or that I could ever be so happy myself? (p. 572)

The unspoken part here, of course, is that Mrs Barbour’s approval and affection and happiness are the closest thing Theo has to motherly love. It’s unsurprising that he should value them so highly, given what has been missing from his life. And though he doesn’t remark on the connection explicitly in the text, the quasi-familial bond is alluded to once again by Mrs Barbour:

“I suppose I shouldn’t say this, I hope you don’t mind if I speak from the heart for a moment, but I always did think of you as one of my very own, did you know that? Even when you were a little boy.” (pp. 574-575)

But alas, all is not as perfect as the painstakingly selected baubles for the wedding attempt to suggest. Here are IM’s thoughts and questions on the pairing, which they were kind enough to share:

Theo’s engagement to Kitsey Barbour — I find their relationship fascinating and think its brilliantly conceived by Tartt. Is he doing it just to please Mrs Barbour? Are they both doing it for that reason? And if so why — is it to assuage his guilt for not having been in contact with Andy? […] Tartt delicately builds up our doubts about the Kitsey / Theo relationship — the fact that she is not moved by anything and Theo’s doubts about what lies beyond the ‘sparking blue shallows — so enticing at first glance’

These are good questions, and I think the reader is left to read between the lines of Theo’s narration to some extent. He certainly carries guilt for having lost contact with Andy, and he almost as certainly feels as though he owes the Barbours collectively, something for the kindness they showed him as a child. But, the great deal of amorphous affection he feels for the Barbours (part familial, part (once, if no longer) aspirational) is further complicated by the introduction of the romantic strain, in the shape of Theo’s engagement to Kitsey.

Tartt makes no effort to hide the imperfection of the union. Where Kitsey is a burgeoning socialite in the younger Mrs Barbour’s mould, the selecting of flatware and crystal and tablecloth patterns is almost literally enough to drive Theo back to narcotics. And, of course, he also pines for Pippa. She is the ideal; she remains the personification of all that Theo sees as good in his life: childhood before tragedy, union with his lost mother. Again, we find Theo lucid enough to understand this himself:

I was deluded, and I knew it. Worse: my love for Pippa was muddied-up below the waterline with my mother, with my mother’s death, with losing my mother and not being able to get her back. All that blind, infantile hunger to save and be saved, to repeat the past and make it different, had somehow attached itself, ravenously, to her. (p. 570)

And worst of all she is unattainable. Geographically remote, yes, but worse: happy in her separate life to which Theo has no access, and in which he has only the most minor of cameo roles to play. The distance between himself and Pippa is something Theo experiences as unbridgeable in the same way that the gulfs between his youthful innocence and his compromised present, and between him and his mother cannot be crossed.

Like I said: “issues”. Even Boris — of all people — has the clarity to see how deep Theo’s psychological damage runs, and the extent to which it informs his behaviour. Of their time spent together drinking and misbehaving as adolescents, Boris tells Theo:

I was trying to have fun and be happy. You wanted to be dead. It’s different. (p.622)

Is Boris right? Does some part of Theo long for his own destruction? Perhaps, unconsciously, he longs for his own death because it would right the scales in terms of that great unfairness: that his mother died and he lived. To which we might add that his father died and he lived. To which we might add that Andy died and he lived.

It would explain, also, the recklessness with which Theo proceeds in most spheres of life. The business dealings he knows could land him in jail, or worse; the drug habit that could land him in the hospital, or worse. Ruination for himself and for those whom he cares about.

But still. But still. It was only a matter of time. […] Every day, I wondered when and how the first fraud might surface (pp.577-8)

Theo is speaking specifically about the antiques at this moment, but it is easy to read in his frantic pondering the greater question: how is it that his life will unravel? Which deceit will find him out? Which block will come loose first, and send the whole thing crashing down around him?

The brilliance of Theo as a character, as constructed by Tartt, is that this delicate web of deceit and potential disaster is not just plot motivation for him, and not just circumstance surrounding him - it is the core of his psychology. There is a powerful, deeply sympathetic moment toward the end of this week’s reading when Theo realises as much:

How could I have believed myself a better person, a wiser person, a more elevated and valuable and worthy-of-living person on the basis of my secret uptown? Yet I had. The painting had made me feel less mortal, less ordinary. It was support and vindication; it was sustenance and sum. It was the keystone that had held the whole cathedral up. And it was awful to learn, by having it so suddenly vanish from under me, that all my adult life I’d been privately sustained by that great, hidden, savage joy: the conviction that my whole life was balanced atop a secret that might at any moment blow it apart. (pp. 627-628)

I have played amateur psychologist this week and suggested a potential motivation for Theo. You might have your own theories (and I’d love to hear them!), but regardless of the why, there can be no question that Theo has worked his way deep into a nested set of problems, any one of which could destroy him. The revelation that the painting wasn’t even in his possession all these years only serves to underline the extent to which his life is out of control.

With about 200 pages remaining, I hope you’re as invested as I am, and equally concerned for our narrator’s wellbeing. I will see you here in a week to find out if things have got any better… or any worse.